


Respect The Uniform

by Nitrobot



Category: Transformers: Robots in Disguise (2015)
Genre: F/M, First Meetings, High School, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 23:08:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6170332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nitrobot/pseuds/Nitrobot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Even if it's several sizes too small)</p>
<p>Strongarm, as we all know, is a big girl, so standard size academy uniforms don't fit her very well. In comes Sideswipe with the answer to all her problems (and to become the source of all her future ones...)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Respect The Uniform

**Author's Note:**

> Request for the same friend who shipped Optimus/Twirl.  
> I indulge my friends way too much.
> 
> Also Thundercracker is a school principal because I now headcanon that he and Skywarp switched sides like Knockout at the end of the war and he got put in charge of a dump to pay for his crimes ~~(and uh I couldn't think of anyone else…)~~

Strongarm pressed her denta together, trying to stop air grumbling through them. Her tense cords didn't help with all her protoform trying to squeeze out of the tight confines of her armour. “Sir… with all due respect, I still don't understand what's so difficult about just GETTING BIGGER UNIFORMS!”

“Amplifying your vocaliser won't get you anywhere, Strongarm,” Thundercracker scolded, wings as stiff as his backstrut and daring anyone to grab at them. “I understand this is an unfortunate situation, but I'm afraid there's nothing else I can do. You are just…” His jaw hung open for a few klicks, and his optics seemed to struggle to keep contact with her own. There were very few words he could describe her with without losing his job, and they both knew it. Eventually he settled on one that still made him lean away from her for his own safety. “ _Bigger_ than… the femmes who usually attend the academy, and we cannot afford to have tailor made sizes for uniforms. But you are free to have the alterations made yourself-” She was already scoffing at the idea, knowing her sire could hardly afford new ped covers let alone custom tailoring. “Or you can wear a mech uniform should one fit better-”

“I'm not dressing like a mech just so I don't have to walk around with my chestplates practically bursting out!” she insisted, throwing her servos down by her sides in clenched fists even as she thought she heard the uniform seams ripping. To the Pit with priorities, she'd rather have all her internals squashed together than strut around in lumpy plating practically falling off her frame.

Thundercracker sighed under closed optics and a creased forehelm, wringing his digits together with his servos on his desk. “Well, Strongarm, the main point is that this shouldn't interfere with your learning,” he said, as a poor recompense for her suffering. “At the end of the semester, I can see about having larger sizes available but until then-”

“Until then I just have to put up with it?” Strongarm finished, and Thundercracker could only shrug helplessly with even his wings flapping uselessly at her. With a fierce scowl branding itself onto her face, she turned to leave with a harsh mumble of “Fragging unbelievable…”

“I'll ignore that use of language if you go straight back to class,” Thundercracker said sternly behind her, just as his comm unit blipped loudly. Strongarm heard him groan again as he answered the call, and made herself hang back against the wall just outside the office door.

“What is it _now_ , Skywarp? Look, if Starscream’s not going to loan you the credits, what makes you think I will? You're not trying to invest in another pyramid scheme, are you, cause I told you time and time again: if spike enhancers worked, then _every_ mech would have them by now!”

Though the family troubles of her principle didn't help her situation, eavesdropping at least made her feel better. Anything wrong in her life could always be made worse by siblings, and thank Primus her sire learned how to use firewalls after she was born. When she worried she wouldn't be able to stifle her laughter anymore she started to edge away from the open door and back down the hallway, only to be frozen by the sound of distant peds slamming against the floor. There was a shadow coming closer on the end wall of the corridor, and in a nanoklick it was replaced by a blurr of panting red. If Thundercracker couldn't already hear the dumbaft approaching, he’d certainly see him zooming past his door and slap a detention on his back. 

So despite her frustration towards the Seeker, Strongarm decided to do her duty as hallway monitor and save Thundercracker the trouble of catching him. Her ped stretched out and easily collided with the racing mech’s, and he fell with a cry of “GAAAAH-!” before his mouth crashed into the ground. He groaned, rubbing tenderly at the crumpled crest jutting out of his helm as he slowly turned it towards her standing behind him

“Did… did you just trip me?!” He whined from half pain, half outrage at anyone daring to stop him from turning the school into a track.

Strongarm folded her servos over, leaving the Monitor emblem on her chest uncovered, and moved in front of the gaping mech. “Don’t run in the halls, and you wouldn't fall over so easily,” she suggested with a slightly cruel smirk. “Where’s your hall pass, anyway?”

Still sprawled on the floor, his faceplate went blank as he rummaged around his armour- very snugly fitting, not nearly as much as Strongarm's, but definitely too much to make hiding anything around it possible. So he was just making a very poor act of looking for a pass he didn't have in the first place. “Uh… well, looks like I dropped it in my hurry.” He stared up at her with a chipped denta smirk, lopsided like her own sire’s when he got in trouble. 

“Uh huh,” Strongarm huffed skeptically. “You gonna get up any time soon or should I just drag you into TC’s office?”

The smirk fell away, replaced by the closest thing she'd ever seen to a Cybertronian imitating a turbopuppy. “But the view’s so nice down here…”

She blinked, shoulders loosening in a brief flash of confusion, until she realised he’d been staring up at her chestplates the whole time. “That’s it, you little punk-!”

“Wait, wait!” He was pleading before she even grabbed his neck cables, hauling him near effortlessly onto his scrabbling peds. She let him go just to stop her armour straining and him from whimpering at her. He smoothed his crest over, as if he could rub the dents out, and exhaled lightly with hands spread out in some kind of gesture of starting over. “Okay, inappropriate, I know, but… well, you fit the uniform a lot better than most femmes.”

“I’ll assume you're using ‘fit’ ironically,” Strongarm deadpanned, though for once she resisted the urge to roll her optics. Most mechs didn't risk complementing her after the “boyfriend benchpress” incident of freshbot year, and despite her firm faceplate there was a blush starting to creep under her expression.

Whether or not Sideswipe noticed, he just shrugged. “Whatever that means. But listen... lemme make a deal with you.” He glanced away with his glossa clicking behind his denta, actually proving he could think before speaking. “As much as I'd like to believe it, a girl like you isn't walking around like that by choice, right? But my grandcarrier, okay, she's an armoursmith. Designer, fancy stuff, y’know? And in a few breems I guarantee she'd have that armour fitting like a glove. And all you gotta do is let me slip away.” He finished his offer with a wide grin and servos proudly set on his hips. 

Strongarm, meanwhile, was still trying to process it. Her eyeridges furrowed, mostly in disbelief. He could easily just run away while she was trying to decide what to say, yet here he was still waiting patiently for her answer. “Do I look like I can afford designer tailor services?” she eventually asked, a little more aggressively than needed. The mech flinched, and she instantly regretted it. 

“Well, it'd be free,” he said quietly, pointing his thumb at his chest with a faint smile. “Family discount, y’know.”

That only made Strongarm even more skeptical. A mech literally falling out of nowhere with a solution, and she didn't even know his name. “...You'd do that just for me not turning you in?”

He shrugged again, a slower jolt of his tense shoulders this time. “Well, one more detention and I get suspended… and a whole vorn of slag from my sire…” He rubbed the back of his helm, hooded optics staring at the floor as if considering diving back down on it. To Strongarm, he looked so much like a guilty sparkling she thought she'd suddenly ended up in a daycare center. In the space of less than five klicks, he'd went from abominable to… adorable. And as much as she hated thinking that, the truth was hard to budge once it got lodged in her processor.

She decided to try replacing it with something else, something new that she was still wondering. “What's your name?” she asked.

His optics flicked up in surprise, as if not expecting her to be interested. “Sideswipe,” he answered.

“And what were you running for?”

“Prank went wrong in class, so I got the frag out of there when no one was looking. I was gonna hide in the restrooms til lunch.” The second time seeing his lopsided grin, and she knew for definite that it was a carbon copy of her sire’s. Whether or not it was that which made her go easy on him, or a budding weariness with authority, or something else she wasn't about to acknowledge, she let her servos fall to her sides with a sigh.

“Go back the way you came and turn left at the science hall stairs. It'll get you to the gym restrooms and around TC’s office.”

Sideswipe looked behind him first, seemingly expecting a whole squad of hall monitors to be waiting for him, but finding the way clear he turned back and coughed into his hand. “Right… thanks, uh…”

“Strongarm,” she said, after a nanoklick. 

“Strongarm…” He smiled when he said her name, and she was almost blushing all over again. Thankfully he was already walking backwards down the hall, waving back at her. “I'll see ya. Let you know when I get a favour from my grandcarrier.”

Her serious mask split open, with a smile finally bubbling up from underneath it. “You damn well better, punk,” she called after him.


End file.
